Monday Open Thread | “Roots” 40th Anniversary Week

Posted on March 6, 2017 by rikyrah

This Week 3 Chics highlights the groundbreaking Mini series Roots. Last month marked the 4oth Anniversary of “Roots.” Based on the book, Roots: the Saga of an American Family, by Alex Haley.

We’ll feature selected scenes from the movie.

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As much as America would love to forget about slavery, it’s just NOT.GOING.TO.HAPPEN.

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Wiki: In The Gambia, West Africa, in 1750, Kunta Kinte is born to Omoro Kinte (Thalmus Rasulala), a Mandinka warrior, and his wife, Binta (Cicely Tyson). When Kunta (LeVar Burton) reaches the age of 15, he and a group of other adolescent boys take part in tribal manhood training, ending with a ceremony, after which they become recognized as men and Mandinka warriors. While trying to carry out a task to catch a bird and take it home unharmed, Kunta sees white men carrying firearms, along with their black collaborators. Later, while fetching wood outside his village to make a drum for his younger brother, Kunta is captured by black collaborators under the direction of white men. He is then sold to a slave trader and placed aboard a ship under the command of Capt. Thomas Davies (Edward Asner) for a three-month journey to Colonial America. During the voyage a group of rebels among the human cargo try but fail to stage a mutiny and to take over the ship.

The ship eventually arrives in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1767, where the captured Africans are sold at auction as slaves. John Reynolds (Lorne Greene), a plantation owner from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near Fredericksburg, buys Kunta and gives him the name Toby. Reynolds assigns an older slave, Fiddler (Louis Gossett Jr.), to teach Kunta to speak English and to train him in the ways of living and working as a chattel slave. Kunta, in a persistent struggle to become free again, makes several unsuccessful attempts to escape. Further, to preserve his Mandinka heritage and maintain his Mandinka roots, he wants not to change his name, and he resists such a change. An overseer, Ames (Vic Morrow), gathers the slaves and directs one of them to whip Kunta after his latest attempt to escape and to continue whipping him until he finally acknowledges his new name. For events that occur in 1775, between the above period and the post-Revolutionary War, where the next section begins, see Roots: The Gift.

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57 Responses to Monday Open Thread | “Roots” 40th Anniversary Week

  1. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 10:08 pm

    This guy’s Twitter feed explains the GOP healthcare plan.

    it is horrific

    https://mobile.twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/838944463682686976

    Reply
  2. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 7:51 pm

    On a real tip, I understand Kevonstage about This Is Us

    https://youtu.be/sVGmuEPHB08

    Reply
  5. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 4:39 pm

    Sam Stein‏Verified account @samsteinhp

    Spicer says we shouldn’t trust Comey news on Trump’s tweets because its anonymously sourced. Then won’t say what source Trump tweet based on

    Reply
  10. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 3:59 pm

    Synagogue hate crime suspect an educated, suburban accountant
    03/05/2017, 05:48pm

    Stuart Wright has two tattoos.

    On his left arm is the phrase “Jesus Is Love,” according to police. On his right shoulder, a swastika.

    Wright, 31, was charged with a hate crime for allegedly smashing the window of a downtown synagogue and putting swastika stickers on its doors in early February. Three months earlier, he alarmed members when he visited a Pilsen church, one that was a target of racist vandalism six times in 2016.

    Anti-Semitic incidents have been increasingly visible in recent months. Three Jewish cemeteries across the country were vandalized within one week in February, and several dozen Jewish community centers, including one in Hyde Park, have received bomb threats since the beginning of the year.

    Wright graduated from Hinsdale Central High School in 2003 and went on to the University of Iowa. He later received a master’s degree in accounting from DePaul University.

    In Hinsdale Central’s 2000 and 2002 yearbooks — Wright’s freshmen and junior years — he was not listed as a member of any clubs or team sports. In both yearbook photos he has curly blonde hair, unlike recent mugshots in which he has a shaved head.

    http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/synagogue-hate-crime-suspect-was-educated-suburban-accountant/

    Reply
  11. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 3:55 pm

    great twitter feed:

    https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/838514170261831680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

    Charles Clymer‏Verified account @cmclymer

    2/ I swear I lose a little respect for fellow liberals who say this. I really do. It smacks of the worst naiveté. There is no mystery here.
    Charles Clymer‏Verified account @cmclymer

    3/ Trump was SO very clear about what he said he would do, and he was SO very clear about his lack of knowledge on anything.

    Reply
  13. SouthernGirl2 says:
    March 6, 2017 at 3:47 pm

    Straight up GQ cover

    Reply
    • eliihass says:
      March 6, 2017 at 6:43 pm

      His gorgeous wife who was out and about with him made for a perfect picture…

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6NAgM9VAAAAnto.jpg

      Reply
      • Ametia says:
        March 6, 2017 at 6:47 pm

        WOW, JUST effing WOW Now why would the photographer leave Michelle out?

        Reply
        • eliihass says:
          March 6, 2017 at 8:32 pm

          It’s been going on forever Ametia… and it’s seriously insidious and crappy stuff that’s fast becoming brazen – and completely ‘normal’ and acceptable..

          Black out/erase his black wife …subjecting her to the now all too familiar routine…that demeaning and false stereotype of black women as not beautiful or attractive or sexy or desirable, or deserving or worthy of the spotlight, attention, gushing …or even of the husband who chased and courted her and married her…

          All while they disrespectfully take liberties with her husband…isolating, marketing and pimping out another woman’s husband as if he were single and available…marketing another woman’s husband, as some sort of available sex object…

          It’s not just disrespectful, it’s pretty sick and twisted – and treads some seriously dangerous waters…and is frankly, incredibly disturbing…

          I don’t see any other wife in any other famous couple unit being blacked-out or erased …or subjected to the disrespect that this historic FLOTUS has had to put up with…

          Curiously, in every other instance, it is the woman in the couple if anything, that’s focused on for all things relating to beauty and fashion…- no matter how plain or previously commoner – or even gold-
          digging they were before hooking up with their more famous man..

          But when you have even so-called ‘feminists’ pushing this crap…with even a so-called ‘feminist’ editor of a so-called women-empowering and women-focused, women as part of a sisterhood magazine, is focused more on the ‘hot’ President – and somehow isn’t about extending her ‘feminist’ support to the president’s wife (who ironically was the one collaborating with the magazine on her education and other initiatives)…

          But somehow under the guise of the
          feminist magazine ‘thanking the president’ (and not his wife) via an Instagram post…a post that somehow
          ends up disrespectfully veering off and becoming about the married president being this ‘feminist’ women’s magazine
          editor’s ‘hall pass’…

          Though to be honest, it always boggled my mind how so many of these so-called feminists and feminist groups never really cared about the historic FLOTUS who all by her lonesome, has lived, been subjected to – and continues to be – every imaginable textbook abuse, slight and adversity in the feminist handbook…but somehow even as they mostly dismissed her and her compelling story, they were all over the FLOTUS’ husband… hailing him a ‘Feminist’ – and head-scratchingly, in complete isolation of the woman he married …and only focused entirely on him ..and …swooning every chance they
          got…Yet, nothing about his wife…I was always amused by their slick attempts at access to the President under any guise,
          but it nonetheless didn’t make it less pathetic and insulting..

          As I’ve said before, I couldn’t put up with even a fraction of the crap my historic FLOTUS has had to, but some of this stuff
          seriously needs to stop…

          And hopefully, there are enough decent people pushing back hard, not just on her behalf…but on behalf of black two men and girls all over the world…and
          demanding that these very hurtful and damaging stereotypes that have taken hold over time and have cast black women and girls stereotypically at the bottom of society’s wrung…and has led to them being demeaned and disrespected and abused, must once and for all end…

          But it starts with black people…black men and women, appreciating, elevating, celebrating and holding up their black women and girls…

          Reply
      • SouthernGirl2 says:
        March 6, 2017 at 8:09 pm

        He didn’t leave her out. PBO was a little further away so he got several pics.

        Reply
    • eliihass says:
      March 6, 2017 at 9:09 pm

      That Milo crap at Berkeley was never about ‘free speech’…neither are the Richard Spencer campus tours …

      There’s been a stepped up and concerted effort not just at recruiting and converting, but normalizing and getting buy-in …and through that, in their minds, reclaiming their rightful place at the head of the pack…

      And they’re pretty slick and crafty they way they’re going about it…

      The divide and conquer and the pitting of groups against each other…and the gee, we’re young, cool and hip too tactics they hope will work to some extent on as many low-information folks…

      Pit non-Muslims against Muslims…pit low-income Americans against immigrants of color, handpick a hollow, self-loathing narcissistic English of Greek ancestry gay foreigner to taunt and insult trans young adults on campus…

      Reply
  16. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 3:39 pm

    A warning, a gun sale and tragic consequences
    Published on March 6, 2017

    Despite a mother’s plea, her mentally ill daughter was sold a firearm. Here’s why she sued.

    She called the police. Then ATF. After that, the FBI.

    Janet Delana was desperate to stop her mentally ill adult daughter from buying another handgun.

    Finally, Delana called the gun shop a few miles from her home, the one that had sold her daughter a black Hi-Point pistol a month earlier when her last disability check had arrived.

    The next check was coming.

    Delana pleaded.

    Her daughter had been in and out of mental hospitals, she told the store manager, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She had tried to kill herself. Her father had taken away the other gun, but Delana worried that her daughter would go back.

    “I’m begging you,” Delana said through tears. “I’m begging you as a mother, if she comes in, please don’t sell her a gun.”

    Inside the store:
    “Something like what I bought last time,” Colby Sue Weathers said to the manager, Derrick Dady.

    She seemed nervous, he would recall to police.

    Weathers had a diagnosis of mental illness, but she had never been identified as a threat to herself or others by a judge or ordered to an extended mental hospital stay — which meant she could pass the background check for her gun.

    The Hi-Point pistol and one box of ammunition cost Weathers $257.85 at the Odessa Gun & Pawn shop on the main drag of the small Missouri town about 40 miles east of Kansas City.

    Weathers headed back to the house the 38-year-old shared with her parents, stopping for a pack of unfiltered cigarettes along the way at a gas station. A firefighter who was an old acquaintance saw her acting skittishly and muttering.

    An hour after leaving the gun store, Weathers was back home where her father sat at a computer with his back to her.

    She shot.

    Weathers planned to kill herself next but told a 911 operator: “I can’t shoot myself. I was going to after I did it, but I couldn’t bring myself to it.”

    Delana lost Tex, her husband of nearly 40 years, and her daughter, who was charged with murder. And beneath her anguish, Delana seethed.

    The store had made about $60 profit on the sale, court records would show.

    “After everything I did, they still sold her a gun,” Delana said recently. “The more I thought about it, the madder I got. I wanted someone to pay.”

    Reply
  18. Ametia says:
    March 6, 2017 at 3:31 pm

    BTW, Sessions was at Mar-a-largo with #45 this weekend, continuing their plan to DISMANTLE AMERICA’S DEMOCRACY

    Reply
  19. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 3:31 pm

    Mark Knoller‏Verified account @markknoller

    By the end of the weekend, Pres Trump will have spent all or part of 14 days at Mar-a-Lago. Amounts to 31% of his days in office, so far.

    Reply
  20. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 3:27 pm

    this is who they are. there are so many protections that people take for granted

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6QzgGMUwAAHcjn.jpg

    Reply
  25. Liza says:
    March 6, 2017 at 2:00 pm

    I don’t know what to think anymore.

    After the weekend, Trump’s Twitter rant on Saturday morning followed by the re-emergence of the Birther King, falsely accusing PBO of illegally wiretapping Trump Tower, and now the new and improved Muslim ban…

    We have to wonder about our nation’s resilience. How resilient are we really? How much ground will we lose? How far can we go backwards? And this is just the first six weeks.

    Reply
  27. SouthernGirl2 says:
    March 6, 2017 at 10:13 am

    ROOTS!!!!!!!!!

    Reply
    • eliihass says:
      March 6, 2017 at 6:30 pm

      “Mentally ill and minorities..”. 🤔😏

      A very small step in the right direction …

      But it would help if police departments actually cleaned house of, and also stopped hiring soulless, hate-filled racists with bloodlust…specifically targeted at certain demographics..

      Reply
  29. Liza says:
    March 6, 2017 at 10:09 am

    A much needed laugh here. This is too funny.

    Reply
  32. rikyrah says:
    March 6, 2017 at 9:34 am

    Good Morning, Everyone😐😐😑

    Reply
  35. Ametia says:
    March 6, 2017 at 7:41 am

    Good Morning, Everyone.

    Reply
    • yahtzeebutterfly says:
      March 6, 2017 at 8:11 am

      Good Morning, Ametia and Everyone!

      I can’t believe it’s been 40 years since Roots came out! What an event it was!

      Reply

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